Category: Parenting

This is our busy time of the year for attending birthday parties and it is becoming exhausting as all the children get older. Having just run a gamut of parties for children of various ages we ended up coming up with a few things we would do differently next year, so I thought I would share them.

1. Don’t let anyone make you the entertainment
   We turned up at one party and my wife was given the task of creating masks for the children. She was given a bunch of paper plates, cardboard, a set of instructions, sticky tape and scissors. Apparently the hostess felt that since my wife was a teacher and an artist she was qualified to entertain the children. That just pissed us off. Don’t let it happen by sticking to tip 2 (see below).
2. Don’t plan to stay long
   Obviously you should stay for as long as you’re enjoying yourself but you need a get out clause. If you set an expectation with the hosts that you’re not staying long you remain in control of your own time. You can leave early, arrive late, whatever you want without feeling a pang of guilt.
3. Eat before you get there
   The temptation to take advantage of free food is a strong one but no matter what you do there will be cakes, sweets and lollies available. Children on sugar are hard work, your only hope is to fill them up with healthy food first so that they’re less tempted. It’s good advice for the parents too because you’ve got limited chance of eating anything other tha sugar yourself once you get there.
4. Don’t over think the gift
   Wandering around a toy store for ages, looking for something useful is pointless. The chances are that this close to Christmas the gifts will be recycled as Christmas presents anyway. Call me cynical but at one of the parties we recently went to the gifts were securely placed out of site, still wrapped and were not opened while we were there. I’m 99% sure that those presents are going back out as Christmas presents this year. I opt for gift vouchers now.
5. Don’t take any toys of your own
   Unless you want to spend 30 minutes trying to locate your belongings before you can leave take as few as possible. If you take any toys at all they will get blended in amongst all the other kids toys. Anything you take is fair game for all the other children. You will lose stuff. The best option is not to take anything.

So that’s it. My top 5 tips for surviving children’s parties. If you have any of your own feel free to send them.

Just wait a little while. Eventually social search will reach the point where with a simple question you can ask the internet what facebook groups someone has been a member of. To the 14 year old who set up the kick a ginger group on Facebook that might not be scary, but let’s hope he never applies to a company with anti-discrimination policies for a job. Oh wait – that’s all of them isn’t it? Let’s hope the same for those other 20,000 members of that group. All now tainted with the fact that they joined a group that resulted in violence. All idiots.

I wrote a few weeks back about how social search is going to empower educators, employer and governments to easily find out everything you have said about yourself online. When it becomes available it will become a part of almost every selection process for every company and institution.

The associations you create on the internet are there forever so I don’t understand why there aren’t more parents educating their children about managing their online life. The internet is connecting idiots like never before and let’s face it, past a certain age most kids are idiots. At the moment their safety is in numbers. It’s the pack mentality that numbers create anonymity but the internet won’t forget and every day it’s becoming easier and easier to search. One day everyone’s online behaviours will be profiled. Including yours.

In the last couple of years I’ve been thrown up on no less than 8 times. One in the face while playing, two on my lap while holding, and five down my back while comforting. I’m not talking about the small, frequent eruptions kids have, I’m talking about full body coatings with the entire stomach contents. It’s the baptism of every new parent.

In the most recent I was the ungreatful recipient of a full back coating with what looked like curdled milk and apple sauce at 3am. Cleaning the mess up inspired me to finally put together something I’ve been talking about for the last year. The Sick Kit.

The Sick Kit contains all the items you need at hand to clean up after a sick incident, including preventing the lingering smell!

1. A Bucket

A multi purpose item. Firstly it keeps the kit together so it’s easily retrieved at short notice. Secondly it can be used to catch the sick . . . if you’re quick enough. Thirdly it’s for carrying all items covered in sick away from the scene of the crime safely. Generally I’ll strip after being painted, and put all the clothes in the bucket so I can get them to the washing machine without dripping on the rest of the house.
2. A spoon

Assuming you’ve stripped yourself, bedsheets, and your child of all vomit covered items to prevent it spreading you now have to get that sick off the furniture and carpets before it soaks in. A spoon is essential for this. Using it is simple: scrape, wipe onto kitchen roll (see item 4) and place paper in the bucket with the clothes. Repeat.
3. A sponge, full water bottle and small pot

You’re going to need to do some soaking up. I find that water mixed with a little liquid detergent and a sponge is essential for that but I don’t want to be running backwards and forwards to the kitchen. Keep a sponge, a water bottle with water and detergent in it, and a small pot to squeeze the liquid into and you’re set for some soaking action. Simply dampen sponge, press onto sick and wipe gently, squeeze out and repeat. Dump everything in the bucket once finished.
4. Paper Towels/Kitchen Roll

Have a full roll to hand and don’t be afraid to use it. After you’ve scraped and sponged you really want to be drying. Simply press the paper onto the wet areas to absorb as much moisture as possible. I’d suggest using one of the good absorbent brands. Throw the used paper in the bucket.
5. Bicarbonate of Soda

A miracle amongst cleaning products. Bicarb is indispensible. Once you’ve scraped, sponged and dried as best you can, you’re still left with a smell. It’s the smell that keeps you cleaning long after you’ve done as much as is realisticly possible. Liberally sprinkle bicarb over the affected areas, leave it to dry and vacuum it up later. The smell will be gone even before the vacuuming begins.

Since everything is back in the bucket at the end just carry it out to the laundry and start throwing away paper and stuffing the washing machine. The best thing about that is you can get out with the minimum of disruption, if all this is takng place at 3am and you want to get the child back to sleep that’s really important.

And that’s it. You might want to add an antibacterial hand soap to the list if you suspect you’re dealing with something contagious but other than that you’re set. Using those items we’ll keep the nursery smelling fresh and looking clean despite any attempts from our child to redecorate!

I’m always trying to cut through advertising, to work out if something is really going to be useful to me. I wanted to present an insight into how I do that based on a recent book release. I know a lot of parents think that the answer to their problems is in something that they need to pay for , I don’t believe that’s true (unless it’s medical in nature) but the advertisers want us to believe it.

Whale Done Parenting: How to Make Parenting a Positive Experience for You and Your Kids, (well done parenting – get it?) was released this month and you can pick it up for roughly 11USD on Amazon.

It was written by the team behind Whale Done! : The Power of Positive Relationships, a management book which hit the bestseller lists something like seven years ago and still ranks highly on Amazon. I read it (I’m a manager) – the theme is positive reinforcement but with a whale analogy. Whale Done reused themes from “The One Minute Manager” also written by part of the Whale Done writing team, however the reuse meant it felt a bit recycled. In short this is a book written by a team who have recycled their own content in the past. I should add that I did like The One Minute Manager.

I’ve always been aware of the fact that many self help books have something in common: they can be designed to generate lots of money for very little author effort. That’s particularly true for management books and parenting books. There are nearly 120,000 parenting books on Amazon and almost a million on management. The sheer volume tells you how easy it is to pump out the content and you can expect that a certain amount of recycling is needed to keep those topics alive.

As well as the probable recycling of content this looks to also be recycling the concept. The Whale in the title is supposed to indicate the fact that if positive reinforcement (amongst other related techniques) can get killer whales kissing their trainers they can be used to get (insert anyone here) doing what you want. In Whale Done it was staff, in Whale Done Parenting it’s kids.

So if we add that up, we have a book which appears to be recycling both content and concept, describing the fact that positive reinforcement, with an analogy to animal training, works well as a training tool for children.

Strike one for me is that I personally find the idea that animal training is analogous to parenting pretty offensive. That might not be the idea behind the book but it’s the idea behind the title and that puts me off.

Strike two is that this feels designed to sell, as opposed to designed to help. Catchy title, low price point, lots of mention about how the authors are previous best sellers. They’re using authority, legitimacy, value and reputation to influence my buying habits. I don’t blame them but I can see right through it. Although that would be the publishers not the authors.

Strike three is that even though it’s cheap it feels like a cheaper book to write. I have to question the value of it. Take away the analogy and how many original ideas are presented in the book? Am I getting much for my 11USD? I’m not convinced.

And they’re out. For me at least.

That’s basically how I try to cut through the endless parenting noise on the book shelves: do I like the concept? is there spin involved or is it of genuine value? how much effort went into creating it?

To be fair to the authors, and I do want to be fair because this is a review of the marketing and the concept, not the writing, parents who lack an understanding of the value of positive reinforcement would probably find this to be as good a book as any. For managers who need the same check out the other two books I mentioned. But for me it’s a no thanks.

Obviously I decided not to buy Whale Done Parenting, but if I ever get given it I promise to write a review as a balance to this article, it would be interesting to see if I’m right.

The LA Times recently ran a story about high profile parenting bloggers being wooed by food firms. The story goes that various corporations are offering free stuff to bloggers in return for positive feedback. In the Nestle case described it resulted in a backlash that apparently compromised the credibility of those bloggers. But is that a fair reaction? Were those bloggers selling out, were they naive or were they victims?

Blog sponsorship is nothing new. All the large blogs on the web have major advertising deals, sponsorships and kick backs in place. Does anyone really think that Engadget pay for the stuff they review? It was only a matter of time before advertisers, trying to find cheap and effective advertising channels, began targeting niche communities like parenting. This is simply how advertising works.

Now consider those bloggers. Mostly stay at home mothers, generating small amounts of income from a subject they feel connected to, with a large enough audience to make them feel like authorities. Suddenly they were made to feel that their blogs were important enough for them to be given free stuff and to be treated like celebrities by big powerful corporations and individuals trained in selling ideas. All they had to do is say a few nice things about their hosts and their hosts would make them feel successful. Is that so much to ask?

They were foolish to accept, but they were definitely played; exploited by corporations seeking to cash in on the reputation that those bloggers had built online.

To be fair I’m probably more commercially savvy than the average parent, I have an MBA, I understand influence, and I work closely with product and marketing teams in my day job. It’s very easy for me to see through the crap thrown at parents and children by the advertising industry. I doubt that those bloggers had any idea how much they were being taken advantage of.

I think on balance I can forgive those other parenting bloggers. I hope that they can repair their reputations because when they started out (something this fledgling blogger can attest to) they had the best of intentions at heart.

Browse the web about fatherhood and you might come to the conclusion that if parenting were a profession men wouldn’t be promoted beyond middle management. The glass ceiling would kick in at the moment of birth. If it were a country it would be a dictatorship where men wouldn’t get a vote. It’s an absolute fact that the industry is heavily dominated by mothers.

Laurie Tarkan has recently written a great article over at the New York Times about the mother father dynamic: it’s a team sport, both players share an equal if different role, and it’s the teamwork rather than the individual success that gets the best outcome. This topic is growing in popularity as scientists and psychologists put forward similar points of view. Fathering skills are being recognised as equally important to a child as mothering, but despite this fathers are still very much outside the conversation.

Here’s my insight: Jeremy is 34, his wife Ally is 36. They have an 18 month old daughter.

“I get so frustrated when he offers to look after her so I can go out but then calls me constantly to ask what to do” Ally declares. “I call her constantly because when I’m with her everything I do is wrong.” he counters. I know it’s true because I’ve seen it happen between them. Ally has set herself up as the expert, easy to do because Jeremy is the primary income earner and is around their daughter less. That’s a very traditional pattern established in many families, motherhood out paces fatherhood when measured purely in terms of time served. The mother is for the most part dominant.

Which makes the reason fathers are not a part of the picture pretty simple to work out, it’s all about purchasing decisions. The advertisers and marketers have worked out that women tend to make those decisions and so they have feminisied the parenting activity.

Look at some examples: female clothing stores have child sections, mens clothing stores do not. Baby stores are all soft pastels and soft furnishings. In supermarkets baby products are on the same isle as female oriented products. Online baby stores, forums and blogs are dominated by women and those damn pastel shades. I hate pastel shades. It all serves to make me feel unwelcome as a father. It makes me want to step back and let my wife buy what she wants. So is this self fulfilling marketing? If the marketing was being targeted at men baby shops would look like hardware stores and I’d be there every weekend.

What fathers need to do is ignore the marketing, to separate the practical reality from what the marketers want us to think it is. They would prefer our partners to make all the decisions because their sales budgets are being spent on targeting the spending habits of females. The advertising, product design, product placement and incentives are all geared at influencing a womans decision. On that basis a man is actually the better equipped to make the choices, we can make decisions free from the influence of marketing professionals.

I don’t like pastel shades. I prefer power tools to soft furnishings. I couldn’t care less what buggy the celebrities are wheeling their kids around in these days. I’m a father and I can shop.

One thing you can easily do for your kids is to stay on the right side of their teachers. Being blacklisted by teachers won’t automaticaly affect the quality of your kids education, teachers are generally a professional bunch, but if you want to feel welcome at the school functions, be popular, get a good seat at the school play, not be the topic of playground conversation, and be invited on the school day trips follow this simple advice:

• Treat them with respect. These are smart, professional people who went to university for years. They know more about teaching than you do and like it or not this qualifies them to tell you how your child is progressing. A teacher educates 30 or more children each year, ask yourself how many you educate.
• Act like your child is important. Nothing annoys a teacher more than a parent who doesn’t prioritise their child. Did you ever answer the mobile while in a once a year parent/teacher meeting? You’re already in the bad books.
• Follow the rules of the school. Rules are about safey and about management. If you break them then you are endagering either yourself or the children, or creating a headache for a team of people who should be focussed on more important things than you.

Ultimately realise that you’re trusting your children to people who only have their best interests at heart. You should acknowldege that.

One final tip: I’ve talked about how to avoid getting on the bad side of a teacher, but how do you get on the good side? That’s simple. You’re all ranked according to the christmas present you give. It doesn’t have to be expensive, the most cherished gifts I’ve seen have been handmade, but you should definitely send something. It helps.

This weekend our daughter tumbled down some stairs, not a disaster but it was very dramatic. It wasn’t the first time and it certainly won’t be the last. She’s now sporting a nasty graze and a very blue lump on her head. It got me thinking about what that accident would make other parents think, and if I let myself be influenced by them what kind of a parent it might make me.

There’s an entire marketplace of products to help parents protect their children, from clips that eliminate sharp corners in your home to video cameras that watch them while they sleep. Some are more extreme than others, but all are sold to do essentially the same thing: make you feel less afraid. Here are just five of them that I found interesting for reasons explained below.

That’s it. Five products for sale that can make me feel instantly better as a parent. Just five products out of the hundreds available. Ultimatley you have to decide where to draw the line before paranoia based parenting and balanced healthy parenting. It’s totally up to you.

If you want to imagine the world your children are heading into, imagine this: imagine living in a world where everything everybody says or has ever said to you or about you is available online for anyone to find. In that world there are no secrets. At any point in time I can find out who your friends are and I can find out whatever I want to about them as well. Imagine how much I would know about you and about what you do. It’s coming because the internet wants this. Not because it’s evil, finding your every secret and making it public, but because it wants to show you more stuff you might like. It’s all about targeted, personalised and customised experiences. And by experiences I mean advertising. It’s called Social Search. Google it.

It makes sense because your social circle has things in common with you, such as your interests, your lifestyle choices and your income level. You probably have conversations right now when you see your friends and colleagues, recommending what to buy and where to shop. The internet has broadened that social circle beyond people you physically meet and has given you new ways in which to have conversations. It’s those conversations that the internet wants to make sense of, to make sure your surfing experience is more relevant to you, more personalised, more likely to get you to spend.

So is this world we’re heading into really so bad for our children? The fact is that I do have a lot in common with my friends, and a more personalised internet experience makes sense because if I’m going to have to see adverts, at least make them relevant. And it’s not like my social circle is a secret, I’m proud of my friends, proud to be associated with them. So go ahead. Link me to my friends. Profile me. Profile my family.

But it could be bad, really, really bad. We can only begin to imagine how that information will be used in the future, but I’m sure that advertising will only be one part of the story. Employers and Universities will be able to screen applicants based on their entire life history, not just the academic and professional history we provide, the resume as we think about it may even cease to exist, because as the x-files said “the truth is out there”. They will be able to work out what ‘type’ of person you are and whether that means you are likely to be a success, or not. In a similar vein insurance companies will be able to profile you based on what they uncover about you, about your family history, and not what we tell them on the forms we fill out. Whatever the end use of the information is there will certainly be companies compiling information on you, and trying to sell it, and someone will buy it to gain some form of advantage.

The first step towards this has already been taken, the information capture mechanisms (Search Engines, Email, Social Networks and Instant Messaging Applications) are in place and we’re all adding to their database of content stored against our user names every single day. The next steps are to connect it, index it and start searching it. That’s more or less happening as I write. And the internet has no delete button. It’s all their forever. That information is immortal. Everything you have written and continue to write is sat somewhere, waiting. 2 trillion people sending emails, 2 billion typed Google searches every day, 400 million people providing instant updates about themselves, 1 million blog posts every day. All stored, eternal, indexed, containing information about you.

It’s one thing to compromise your own privacy but how much of what you write contains information about your children?

I think this is an important topic for parents because we’re all on here talking about our children, and then allowing our children to talk about themselves. We act like the internet makes us anonymous, but it does not, it does exactly the opposite, and we need to make sure our children understand that. We need to be careful when we broadcast about our families. We need to think of the internet as a recording device, something that saves everything we say. We need to make sure that the information we give out will not create problems for our children in the future.

Of course not everything is damaging. There’s an obvious difference between putting a cute photo of your kids online and telling the internet that their grandparents died of cancer; one is a cute photo, the other is an indication of a genetic tendency to cancer.

I don’t have the answer. I don’t have any real tips yet. I’m thinking about it and I’m working on it but for now all I can really offer is a word of caution. When you type you are providing information forever, you don’t know who will use it or how, but be sure that before you hit submit it’s not something that could impact your children when someone Google’s their name in 20 years.

I mentioned in a previous post what the bionic dad syndrome is but it turns out that it’s not gender specific. The “bionic mum” has suddenly taken up crazy craft projects to make things for our expanding family. She just spent an entire week and more than a little cash in learning how to make cuddly toys.

She bought the materials. Bought a sewing machine. Took some lessons. Took a pattern from a book, she highly recommends by the way, and finally unveiled her creation. If I’d videoed the reaction I would have hit the you tube jackpot.

“No. No. No. Daddy. Pick me up. Pick me up. PICK ME UP”

My heart broke for my wife. Our child rejected her first cuddly toy creation. She took it well but I suspect she was hoping for excitement, not terror. Still, she’s not giving up so I reckon there’ll be a few more creations like this one hanging around our house in the coming weeks.

I’m open to suggestions for what to do with the monkey, or if you can give it a good home let me know. Maybe I’ll send it to you.